I am thinking of a word that keeps popping up whenever the Mohammed cartoons are mentioned.First they came for the Florentine Boar statue in a park in Derby, of (formerly) "Great" Britain:
That word is BUT. A sneaky word. It is used to deny or qualify what one has just said.
How many times lately have we not heard people of power, the Opinion Makers and others say that of course we have freedom of speech, BUT.
...
That is why I say: Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech. There is no but.
A year and a half ago, I mentioned in this space the Florentine Boar, a famous piece of porcine statuary in Derby that the council had decided not to have repaired on the grounds that it would offend Muslims.Then they came for depictions of the Whinnie-the-Pooh character, Piglet:
Alas, the United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.Then they came for anything squiggly-looking:
Only the other day, Burger King withdrew its ice-cream cones from its British restaurants because Mr Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe, after a trip to the Park Royal branch, complained that the creamy swirl on the lid resembled the word "Allah" in Arabic script.At some point, someone has to put his foot down.
It doesn't, not really, not except that in the sense any twirly motif looks vaguely Arabic.
And that foot is me.
Because, as Steyn eloquently explains what should be obvious to any imbecile,
In the long term, these trivial concessions are more significant victories than blowing up infidels on the Tube or in Bali beach restaurants. An act of murder demands at least the pretence of moral seriousness, even from the dopiest appeasers. But small acts of cultural vandalism corrode the fabric of freedom all but unseen.So with that, I present to you, Piglet with a squiggly-mark.
Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens? If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh or the abstract swirl on a Burger King ice-cream, how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society? As A A Milne almost said: "They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace/ Her Majesty's Law is replaced by Allah's."
By the way, isn't it grossly offensive to British Wahhabis to have a head of state who is female and uncovered?
Behold, the unstoppable allahpig!
